Leicester City, for Now, Is Flying High

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Gokhan Inler of Leicester, left, going for a header against Carlos Sánchez of Aston Villa as Leicester came back to win, 3-2, on Sunday. Leicester acquired Inler in August from the Italian club Napoli.CreditAndrew Boyers/Reuters

LONDON — With the game over, a white helicopter landed on the center circle of the field, enabling the owner of Leicester City to depart.

In the five years since Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, a Thai billionaire, took over at Leicester, the only way fans have known if the owner was in town was when they saw the helicopter land or take off.

The team, too, is flying high right now.

In May, Leicester completed an escape from relegation that was extraordinary. And on Sunday, the team came from two goals down with 20 minutes left to beat Aston Villa, 3-2, a trick that even the great Houdini might not have thought possible. Five games into the Premier League season, Leicester City is in second place, behind only Manchester City.

During the off-season, Leicester changed managers, replacing the Englishman Nigel Pearson with the well-traveled Italian Claudio Ranieri. The new manager changed a few players, but he is too savvy to tamper with the two things at the core of Leicester’s surprising success — its fast pace of play and its unquenchable spirit.

“Fantastic spirit,” said Ranieri. “I have very many experiences in my life, but never did I see character better than here.”

Never gifted enough to be a star when he played defender for his beloved A.S. Roma, the 63-year-old Ranieri coached 13 different clubs — among them Napoli, Juventus and Inter in Italy, Valencia and Atletico Madrid in Spain and Monaco in France — and the Greek national team before arriving in Leicester.

But it was at Chelsea, where he built the first team under Roman Abramovich’s ownership before being summarily dismissed 11 years ago, that Ranieri acquired a unique title. He was dubbed “The Tinkerman” by journalists because of his perceived habit of constantly altering playing personnel or tactics.

“What is this Tinkerman?” Ranieri once asked following a training session, during which the coach seemed to run around with the ball with far more vigor than any player.

When a few tried to explain that it was not, at that time, a word in the English dictionary, he burst out laughing. “So,” he said, “I shall be the first Tinkerman!”

During Sunday’s game, just at the moment when his team went two goals down, Ranieri was warming up two players on the sideline. The man was about to tinker again. “I saw that the team wanted something different,” he later explained. “I wanted to try to refresh.”

Having already made one change at halftime, the manager was gambling with his last two substitutions 64 minutes in, and they helped to turn the contest around.

Nathan Dyer, Ranieri’s halftime substitute, had never played for Leicester before after coming over on loan from Swansea City during the summer break. Dyer went on to score the game-winner, rushing in to head the ball in a situation that required the utmost bravery and optimism.

Dyer, the smallest guy on the field at a little over 5-feet-5, clattered into Villa’s hulking 6-foot-4 American goalkeeper, Brad Guzan. Guzan’s knee hit the head of Dyer, who said he did not know he had scored until the medical trainer treating him told him so.

This is Leicester City, rushing in where few men dare, and at a height no Leicester City team has reached before in the Premier League. The Thai owner surprised everyone in the sport when he hired Ranieri after the coach was let go by Greece, and the coach set about recruiting his own players while not disrupting the team spirit he inherited.

Srivaddhanaprabha, who made his fortune with a chain of duty-free stores, is estimated to be the ninth-richest man in Thailand, though the club does its shopping around the lower end of the global transfer markets. Riyad Mahrez, an Algerian winger with great speed and a beguiling touch, cost only about a half a million dollars when Leicester acquired him from the French club Le Havre in January.

Jamie Vardy, who was plucked out of one of the lower leagues of British soccer, has become a striker on the England national team. Dyer and the Japanese striker Shinji Okazaki and the Swiss midfielder Gokhan Inler, both recent acquisitions, are being blended into a team that knows its limitations but appears not to know when it is beaten.

The manager smiled benignly when reporters asked if he is back with a vengeance after Chelsea fired him so it could hire José Mourinho 11 years ago. “A long time ago,” Ranieri answered, “but always I wanted an opportunity to come back to England.”

He always has smiled when the going is tough. Ranieri knows the lingua franca of his sport, and if to tinker means to change in search of improvement, then this coach has left a legacy at Valencia, Naples and certainly at Chelsea that other men have been able to profit by.

During the off-season, many thought Pearson was safe in his job because of how he kept the team together and avoided relegation, but the Thai owner decided to make the change. No one outside the boardroom thought Ranieri would end up coaching Leicester this season.

The manager is taking nothing for granted. “I just talked to the players,” he said on television after Sunday’s comeback win. “I said we have 11 points, now we need 29 more to save the team.”

The manager is flying high, though he remains grounded in reality. His job is to keep Leicester City in the big league, and after that, to dream.